From: Jack Fulton (jefulton1@comcast.net)
Date: 10/20/03-07:09:50 PM Z
Dear Galina:
We are getting way off the topic here but it is bared and not much seems
to be happening w/gum, Pl/Pd, VDB, cyano, salt, chrysotype, dags, albumen et
al.
> finely a voice that is not going bananas!
I find your thought appealing.
> I both agree and disagree with you here. Naturally, these photographs
> are not portraits of the subjects, but the ego-trip of the artist.
> Children are innocent, the artist is not. It is the artist who shows
> sensuality with the lining of brutality and violence. It is like in a
> discussion about rape: are the victims provoking the act of violence by
> the way they look, the way they dress, the way they are?
Rape is wrong. Period. It is about power. If one dresses so as to incite
such an act or excite one so as to wish some form of sexual encounter, well,
the act of rape is stealing and that is wrong. Period. I cannot argue as to
who is at fault for I only see fault. Rape, over the centuries has been used
as punishment.
> Sally Mann is seeing sensuality in her kids walking around naked, but
> it is her choice to offer her observations for a public viewing. She
> knows, that she is not the only one interested in that kind of
> sensuality. She knows that the pictures are "working". So she is not
> able to think of her children as individuals, she is using them to show
> her own visions...
>
> I do not think the pictures are her self-portraits though... I am
> afraid they are a calculated success, conceptual fake... raskolnokovīs
> murder of the old lady...
>
> I am interested in the subject of crime and punishment: is it allowed
> that young and talented Raskolnikov kills the old lady? Her money can
> be so much more useful to the world when transfered to his pockets?
>
> It is Raskolnikov, who is to find out...
It is interesting you bring up Russian literature, particularly that by
Dostoevsky, the classic author of the moral crisis. As you remember,
Raskolnikov lived in a very dingy and extremely small room. His friend, the
young woman forced into prostitution and his mother all thought ill of this
space which drove him nuts. Perhaps that, more than his idealistic
notion(s), caused him to kill the landlady and her sister.
Such a small room, or window of insight to life, might cause one to make
"disturbing" images as those this group is talking about created by Sally
Mann.
Have you noted it is the disturbing work and not the lyrical we discuss.
We actually fear beauty for we do not have words for it but ugliness we can
defy and deny. Beauty and the sublime seem to be difficult to define and
digest and discuss for it is the case that few have actual contact with
them.
Perhaps, and this is for sake of argument, Ms. Mann lived in a small room:
her mind. John Szarkowski's exhibit a couple of decades back, called
"Mirrors & Windows" used similar metaphors of meaning whereby the mirror
represented the interior thinking photographer and the windows person was
the outward looking one.
Ms. Mann has her own room, her mirror, in her head. I will enjoy observing
her progress through this mirror of time: "A Lass Through The Looking
Glass."
The recent landscape imagery attempts to capture her notion that
landscapes hold spirits of those who once lived there. In the sense this is
ghostly and her imagery emulates that. In many ways between her family
imagery and the landscape work one could say her imagination holds vivid
thoughts and employs photography to manifest them. In that sense her work
seems quite conceptual.
The work is good for it is simple and direct. I have no problems with
that but see it as created to be 'sensational'. This has obviously convinced
those interested in the medium in a serious manner to hold it in their
respect. I don't get much from it emotionally and find it arty.
> I do not think that provocative art should be forbidden or removed. I
> think it is Sally Mann who is to decide what she wants to show.
>
> But I think it is OK to discuss the results of the show...
>
> Somehow I do not want to get to know Sally Mann personally (I have just
> got an invitation to her lecture at a school where I often teach in
> Copenhagen). But it is my choice, there are many other people, who
> would have liked very much to be her friends...
Never pass up an opportunity to substantiate what you think. That way you
will find if you hold prejudice or know the truth as you see it.
> I can only be responsible for my own doings,
>
> so have a look at my brand new web:
I am . . . it is immense and will take some time to peruse. So far, I enjoy
it quite a bit. But, then, I know you slightly and it makes my interest yet
more eager. However, the combination of the sound and images is lovely and
how each images can be melded in to another is brilliant.
As you know, the Headlands stuff always intrigued me due to me living near
it and being in the SF Bay Area. I think being there you 'escaped' the
metaphor of Raskolnikov's room.
> www.galina.no
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